Honeyman Group Ltd has received the Queen’s Award for Innovation, for HydroGienic®, its patented pharmaceutical water storage and distribution system.

The formal presentation of the Queen’s Award Certificate and Crystal Chalice marked a twenty-seven year professional milestone for Trevor Honeyman, Group Chairman. As the inventor of HydroGienic® and the entrepreneur behind the business formation, Trevor shared with assembled guests the challenges and tribulations that have taken this new concept through the highly regulated Pharmaceutical Industry.

The award for outstanding achievement recognises the contribution to industry the business has made among UK entrepreneurs and companies and is the highest accolade a British business can receive.

Tom Honeyman, Managing Director, concluding proceedings said, “Receiving this Award has brought significant positive benefits for the company including an increase in orders for the system. We continue to invest in the expansion of our manufacturing capacity, facilities and people. As world-wide interest has grown coverage from international industry publications,including Manufacturing Chemist and Cleanroom Technology, has led to a second innovation award just a month after the first."

An adopter of the HydroGienic® system is Quotient, a commercial-stage transfusion diagnostics company based near Edinburgh. In commissioning the construction of the campus, Quotient selected Honeyman’s HydroGienic® system over other options on the market. “The new HydroGienic® system flexibility fits with our growth plans. When we need to expand the system, we can increase the number of distribution points with minimal impact on the business. We can now easily add to or isolate parts of the system,” said Gordon Robb, Vice President of Operations of Quotient, “By comparison, a traditional system would need to be taken down on a regular basis and would have associated costs for sourcing water.”www.honeymangroup.com/hydrogienic

HydroGienic® is a bulk high purity water distribution system developed by Honeyman Group to address problems and restrictions associated with existing systems in the pharmaceutical industry.

Typical water distribution systems work on a stainless steel ring main style layout. This means that if one part of the factory requires changes made to their water supply, the whole system has to be closed down and revalidated before it can be used again.  This can lead to disruption in production resulting in significant costs.

The HydroGienic® system utilises a central storage tank, with each area of the factory supplied through its own send and return PTFE hoses. These are connected through a specially designed "plug and play" manifold.  User points can be added or moved without disrupting existing production, resulting in significant cost savings.

This patented system ensures each offtake can be isolated individually. The adaptability, flexibility, and resultant cost saving is significant, translating directly into increased production efficiency, and performance, over the lifetime of the system.